Prank Call
by Reya Knight
Summary: There are prank calls. And there are calls you wish were pranks. Giftfic


**Summary**: There are prank calls. And there are calls you wish were pranks.

**Word Count**: 2,660

**Warnings**: Well, ya'll should know it by… wait… Wait a sec… *looks over the story content* OMGWTFBBQ NO WARNINGS! *o* *Faints*

**Inspiration**: The original story was told to me _years_ ago back in my first year of boarding school. Back when we were young, easily scared of anything that went bump in the night, innocent and really too gullible for our own good. Ah those were the days. I think there's a bit of R.L Stine's _Call Waiting_ in here but I can't be sure; haven't read it in so long.

**Giftfic**: This fic is for **Smartcat** cuz she's real patient and forgiving with me and she simply rocks. Thanks for being one of my beta's in Ex-Boyz! ^-^

**Beta**: **Operagirl76**

**Reya's Rants:** Started this waaaaaay back in September 2011 during an 11-hour flight and fell asleep halfway.I'd been thinking of posting this on Halloween, because it really had the Halloween feel. Pity how that one turned out, yeah, but it gave me enough time to fix it up =3

Naruto? Disclaimed. The original story line? Disclaimed as well. Damn it all.

Awwwwwww here goes! *cue _Kenan and Kel_ soundtrack*

"She said yes, you moron! Why are you crying?" Naruto shouted at the screen. Just for good measure, he threw a navy blue throw pillow in its direction. It hit the picture of the sobbing man right below his red-rimmed eyes.

The lights of the living room flickered briefly and died.

Naruto blinked into the sudden, pressing darkness. "What the hell?" Did he hit the TV too hard or something?

From his position on the couch, he turned to his left and peered owlishly towards the general direction he was sure the window was. After a few seconds of trying to adjust his vision, he could make out the vague outline of curtains fluttering slightly in a breeze he had no idea existed until that moment.

It took another few moments for him to see through the glass and distinguish from the shrubbery outside. It was not one of those annoyingly moonless nights, but it was cloudy and the fingernail moon was nothing to write home about.

Cautiously, Naruto tried walking to the window. The sudden power outage was not anything new; living in the lower parts of Konoha city as he did, he was used to having at most nineteen hours of electricity.

No, what worried him was the possibility of his meter running out on a Friday night.

He knew he should have called back the guy responsible for fixing his generator earlier today. Damn it.

"Ow! Son of a bitch!" Naruto cursed, pausing to rub at his shin. He couldn't tell what he had hit—maybe a table edge—but he made a mental note to seek his revenge as soon as he had the light to do so.

Blinking away the instinctive tears, he peered out the window and sighed in relief. Safe. It seemed it was the entire block that was out. If that was the case, all he'd have to do was wait it out at least—

His phone rang, vibrating and blinking from his pocket enough to make him jump.

Naruto scowled as he withdrew the phone. Man, he needed to calm himself down.

"A private number?" he murmured, accepting the call. "Yes?"

Silence. Naruto frowned. "Hello? Is anyone there? You'll have to speak up; I can't hear you."

Nothing from the other end. Naruto shrugged and ended the call. Tonight looked like rain; maybe the service was bad. If the person was serious they'd call back anyway—

His phone rang again. "Hello?"

This time, there was definitely a voice, but there was also a bit of static. "Hello? Can you hear me?"

"…dy fin… five…way."

"Uh, sorry, I didn't quite get you?"

"…Bloody finger… five miles away."

Naruto slowly pulled the phone away until he was staring at the screen. He just as slowly blinked at it. Calmly, he cut the connection.

"Damn prank calls."

Sometime later, Naruto was staring at the lone lit lantern in the living room; he was starting to get irritated. He could feel the soft, annoying buzz of mosquitoes flying around him. Thankfully, none had bitten him yet, but the buzz was officially one of the most irritating sounds in the world.

Hadn't he sprayed the room just yesterday? Where the hell did they come from?

His phone rang again. Naruto checked the screen and rolled his eyes. It was the hidden number again. Honestly, if he wasn't afraid of missing an important call, he would have ignored it. It had called him three more times already, saying something about a 'Bloody Finger' coming closer to his house. At least, that was what he managed to understand.

But he disliked letting a call go unanswered, so with a put-upon sigh, he picked up the call. "Hello."

"The Bloody Finger's just at your corner."

Naruto scowled. The sing-song voice was starting to get on his nerves. "That's nice. Go to hell."

He cut the connection, feeling his eyebrow twitch in irritation. Seriously, if the person was going to make a prank call, would it kill to come up with a better name? Bloody Finger. Who the hell would get scared or anything from something like _Bloody Finger?_

He glanced outside, more to make sure it was still the entire block that was experiencing the outage than anything else. He was about to look away when a flash of lightning appeared outside.

Naruto felt his eyes widen and his heart give a sharp _badump. _His house was positioned in such a way that he could easily see down the street and a part of the bend that would take a person out of the block.

In that brief instant of illumination, he could have sworn he'd seen a figure standing at the corner—just the way the person on the phone had said.

Naruto squinted, his heart pounding a safari drumbeat. No way. It was just his eyes playing tricks on him. It had to be.

One minute later, lightning struck again. Naruto released a breath. Nothing. No one was there.

"Urgh either the power comes back soon or I call the psych ward," Naruto muttered, if only to break the silence. But his voice only served to unnerve him. He was getting jumpy. His vision was normally excellent; it rarely played tricks on him. But then again, it still happened. Right. So it could have been a shadow cast by a tree somehow.

He decided to ignore the part of his mind that pointed out just how solid the shadow had looked.

And how it had been at least a foot away from the nearest tree.

Naruto sighed again, looking around the room—or at least what he could make of the room beyond the lantern's illumination. He was alone in the house. He'd bought it just earlier that year and aside from the power glitch, he was happy with his purchase. It was small—a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, both with their own bathrooms, and a pantry—but in his opinion, it was perfect for him. He had no family close by and his friends, of course, had places of their own. He could count on one hand the number of times any of them had bunked with him. Lee, that time he had been drunk; Kiba, when he had had a fight with his girlfriend and needed a shoulder to sulk on; Shikamaru, when he had been too lazy to go back to his place.

Yes, he enjoyed his privacy, but right at this moment, he could do with a bit of company.

And no, it was not because he could maybe be slightly freaked out.

It was just coincidence that he got out his phone to call Kiba to ask his friend over, when it started ringing.

Naruto stared at it, biting his lower lip in indecision. The number was withheld. Of course, he had a good idea just who was on the other end. But right now, he was not so sure he wanted to answer. He didn't want to know how close the person was to his house.

He shook his head in the next second and managed a small if a bit shaky laugh. _Listen to yourself_, a jeering voice mentally taunted him. _Getting freaked out over some shadow that may or may not have been there_?

Naruto took a deep breath. "I'm just being paranoid," he murmured bracingly to himself. His finger moved to reject the call but before he could do it, the ringing stopped. He couldn't help the sigh of relief at that, but the relief was short-lived; his phone buzzed with a message. There was no number, just the caption 'Bloody Finger' in capital letters.

How was that even possible?

Dreading the content of the message, Naruto opened it.

"Too bad you saw me."

Naruto was standing in front of his door. He was still trying to convince himself to open it and go out and just confirm if there was actually anyone out there. It was easy to imagine in his mind: he would walk out the door and look around for anything suspicious. Upon finding nothing, he would sigh in relief and laugh at his paranoia. Coming back into the house, he would be pleasantly surprised to find the power back on and carry on with watching his show, putting the entire episode behind him.

It all sounded so easy in theory. Putting it in practice was something else though. Something kept him from touching the doorknob. Something kept screaming at him to leave the house through the back door, to call a neighbor or the police or anything. It told him to go out and at the same time to stay indoors where it was safe.

He was confused and he was starting to get kind of scared.

Naruto took a deep breath, paused, let it out. This was stupid. The stuff that happened in horror films stayed in horror films. It wasn't as though there was a serial killer doll out to get him (in all honesty, he would prefer if there was; at least all he would have to do was aim a strong enough kick in the bastard's direction and send him flying while he ran like all hell) so why was he feeling so skittish?

_Because there are worse things than serial killer dolls._

Urgh. Wasn't there an off button to his inner voice?

Naruto took a deep breath and slapped his cheeks with both hands. Okay. He could do this. It was easy enough. There wasn't anything to be wary of. The neighborhood had a low crime-rate and the people were friendly and helpful enough that if they heard some kind of scream, they would immediately come running.

Even though his nearest neighbor was at least a hundred meters away.

And no one would probably hear him if he were choking on his own blood should his neck suddenly get sliced before he could scream.

Naruto slapped his cheeks again. Harder.

"All right!" he shouted into the darkness, punching his fist into the air. The false bravado only seemed to mock him but he shook the feeling off. He reached out a hand to feel for the doorknob. As soon as he touched it, however, lightning struck outside.

Naruto gave a choked cry.

His door was not the standard wood; it was made of frosted glass. There was no mistaking it now. He was sure he'd seen something (someone?) right outside. Waiting.

A loud rumble of thunder had him jumping back from the door completely with a small squeak. He had to get out of the house. Fast. He needed to be with other people. He needed a baseball bat. Forget that, he didn't _have_ a baseball bat. A lamp? A pan? What was taking the damn power company so long? Did he have his neighbor's number? Where the hell had he kept his shoes?

Naruto blinked, his ringing phone bringing him out of his small panic attack. When and how had he ended up in his kitchen?

He breathed in shakily, his muscles actually weak from adrenaline and fear. He could be overreacting. Right?

Right. Of course.

He nearly sobbed in relief when he saw who was calling.

"Kiba!" he shouted into the phone, heart pounding, voice embarrassingly higher than normal. He felt like jumping through the phone, traveling the wires and ending up in Kiba's bright, non-creepy living room. "Dude! I was just about to call you!"

Silence, until Naruto was wondering if Kiba had hung up. An irrational part of him was running around in hysterical circles, screaming this 'Bloody Finger' had probably gotten his friend and was calling Naruto with his phone.

Naruto took a mental bazooka to that part and buried it under the nearest swamp.

He shivered. Maybe he shouldn't be thinking about murder right now.

"K-kiba?" he whispered.

A slight crackle of static. "Hey, Naruto, can you hear me now? The network's a bitch to work with."

Naruto didn't realize his legs had gone wobbly until he felt the dull pain of his knees hitting the floor. Shit. He hadn't known he had been so…

"Shit, Kiba."

"Don't you 'Shit, Kiba' me! I've been ringing and knocking on your damn door for the past five minutes! Get your ass over here and let me in; it's about to rain any minute from now."

Naruto gave a small bark of laughter. So he _had_ seen that figure outside his door. But he'd been so paranoid that he'd thought… Well, he'd thought something completely different. He forced himself to stop laughing when he noticed himself sounding slightly hysterical.

"Naruto!" Kiba was starting to sound annoyed.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm on my way," the blond grinned, practically rushing to the front door. He grabbed a flashlight from where he had thrown it on the sofa on his way. He wasn't alone anymore. He would tell Kiba about the prank calls (and of course they were prank calls. Probably by Kiba himself, the asshole. How could he ever have thought they were something more?) and they would laugh. Then Kiba would bitch at him for not having the foresight to get his generator fixed as soon as it had gotten broken while they snacked on whatever was in his fridge and waited for the power to come back on.

He flung the door open and raised his flashlight a bit higher to confirm (reassure himself) that it actually was Kiba. He watched as his friend came in, hands in his fleece jacket. Kiba scowled at him—probably for keeping him outside for so long—and stomped in. Naruto hurriedly closed the door, locking it with a loud, satisfying click.

"Dude, you don't know how glad I am you're here," he burst out before he could think about it.

By the harsh light of the flashlight, Naruto could see Kiba frowning at him. "You look too pale. And you sounded out of it on the phone. What's up?"

Naruto gave a shaky laugh, trying to recall why he had been so freaked out. It seemed like he had exaggerated the events of the past hour or two.

"Let's have a seat and I'll tell you all about––" He stopped.

His phone was ringing.

He looked down. It was a hidden number. He gulped, heart skittering and stuttering.

Kiba was watching him, bemused. "Aren't you gonna pick that up?"

"No," he whispered, cutting the call.

Kiba blinked, clearly confused. "Let's… Have that seat. You can tell me what's wr… Hey, are you expecting anyone?"

Naruto frowned, glancing to his left, shining his flashlight better on his door. He took an unconscious step away.

There was somebody at his door.

His phone rang again.

Naruto yelped and came this close to jumping Kiba and clinging to him with all his life.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Kiba snorted, pushing him away. He reached out to the doorknob. "It could be somebody like me. You have no power so your doorbe––"

Naruto's eyes widened and his life freaking _flashed_ before his eyes. He lunged for Kiba's arm, knowing, _just knowing_, something bad was on the other side of the door. "Don't open it! Oh God, don't!"

"Naruto, what the hell is wrong with you?" Kiba shook him off. He returned, determined to wrestle him down if he could. "No, leave me—Naruto!" He pushed him away. Naruto stumbled and fell over. Kiba shook his head and suddenly gave a vaguely eerie smile. "Don't worry; everything'll be fine." And with that, he turned back to the door.

Before Naruto could comment on his words and behavior, he saw the blurry silhouette raise what could be an arm to what could be a head and gulped.

Naruto's phone rang.

No.

He opened his mouth to warn Kiba but it was already too late.

Kiba opened the door.

END

END

Or. . . Is it? *cackles madly*


End file.
